Posts tagged “Operation Ore”

“.. A man wrongly accused in Britain’s largest ever child pornography investigation has won damages in the High Court after an eight-year legal battle.

Jeremy Clifford, 51, from Watford, was arrested and falsely charged in 2003 as part of Operation Ore. His credit card details had been found among those of thousands of British people on a list maintained by Landslide, a commercial provider of illegal pornography based in the US.

Hertfordshire Constabulary seized a computer that had belonged to Mr Clifford and discovered 10 illegal thumbnail images in its temporary internet files folder.

However, a senior High Court judge found on Friday that the arresting officer had been told by a computer forensics expert that the images were not sufficient evidence to charge.

“The images could have been received unsolicited by and even without the knowledge of the operator of the computer, for example as ‘pop-ups’,” said Mr Justice Mackay.

Despite this, the officer, Detective Constable Brian Hopkins, pressed three charges of possession of indecent images of children. Mr Justice Mackay said he cut a “rather pathetic figure” in the witness box, having initially claimed he could not give evidence because of a psychiatric condition.

– snip –

The finding was based on evidence the court heard from an internal investigation launched after Mr Clifford was formally cleared of all the allegations before trial. It found that Hertfordshire Constabulary’s forensics expert, George Fouhey, had advised against pressing charges ..”